Crinetic Pharmaceuticals (founded and led by SDEE member Scott Struthers) was awarded a $2.2 million dollar Phase II Small Business Innovation Research Grant (SBIR) grant from the NIH to develop novel drugs for the treatment of pituitary tumors. 

 These tumors produce excess growth hormone resulting in a range of symptoms that can include gigantism, excess soft tissue growth, arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, heart failure, kidney failure, and vision loss, a condition called acromegaly.

Crinetics is developing a novel class of small molecule oral somatostatin drugs with improved efficacy called “biased agonists”.Their activity is “biased” towards activating the intracellular signaling pathways that inhibit hormone secretion, while avoiding activation of the pathways that cause desensitization to the actions of drug. Researchers believe that desensitization is a major reason why existing peptide somatostatin drugs so frequently fail to adequately achieve long-term hormonal control.